


Your touch keeps me hanging on.

by delusionalwithlove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delusionalwithlove/pseuds/delusionalwithlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter what happened, they could always count on having a steady, loyal heart next to them and a hand to hold. In that way, they never truly lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your touch keeps me hanging on.

**Author's Note:**

> Or, when Allison isn't the one to take Scott's hand at the end of 2x12.
> 
> Title is from the song "Hold Me In Your Arms" by the Black Keys.

Scott can count on one hand how many times, in twelve years of friendship, he’s considered the slight possibility that there could be a day when Stiles is no longer his. 

The feeling never comes the way he expects, never blindsides him the way most of his revelations do, just gently slips in around his heart as if it had always been there and  _squeezes_  until he can’t breathe, and then it’s gone, and he’s left tasting his own bitterness at the back of his throat. 

Except this time, it isn’t going away. It hasn’t, he thinks, for weeks. It shouldn’t, he thinks, with a guilty twist of his stomach. Not when he’s shut Stiles out like this, truly, for the first time in their lives. Not when he’s kept secrets, and taken sides, and pushed and pushed until miles sprang up between them. No matter how many times he tells himself it’s for Stiles’s own good, that he’s keeping him safe, it never stops feeling like he’s put a knife in his own back and twisted, and maybe he has. To hurt Stiles, after all, is to hurt Scott. It’s always been that way, from day one.

They knew instantly, from that first moment that they met in preschool, that there was something different about each other, and about themselves when they were together. No one ever quite understood it, not even the two of them. Sometimes Scott thinks maybe he understands it a little better now, with some age and perspective, but the moment he tries to put it into words, he realizes it’s futile. He couldn’t then, either, the first time they met; to be fair, he was four, and the most complicated word he knew was one he couldn’t even spell, just sound out the way his mom and doctors had taught him in too-small rooms full of alien-like medical diagrams and the acrid smell of antiseptic,  _asthma_. It was what was wrong with him, what made the teacher speak to him differently and watch him like he was about to break at any moment, what made the other kids shy away from him like it might be contagious.

It was what happened that first day, when he forgot for just a moment that he was different, damaged, when he climbed the shiny red ladder of the jungle gym and enjoyed the biting cold of it under his fingers, the smooth surface of the first ring as he grasped it and started the plummet into the open air. It was what happened between the first and second ring, as he swung fruitlessly and grasped for a hold on something, anything to steady himself as he felt his chest tighten and his lungs burning him from the inside out. It was what kept happening as he dropped hard, nose filling with the smell of dirt and the musky cedar of wood chips as he rolled onto his back to look up at the sky, all that open, bright air doing nothing to help him breathe, and then there was Stiles—

—a  wide-eyed, freckled face looming too-close over him, a steady stream of indistinguishable words, muffled by Scott’s panic, and then a hand sliding into his; slightly sticky, clumsily intertwining their fingers and catching him with bitten nails, but the solid press of their palms was enough, just enough to hold him steady—

—until the teacher was pushing them apart so she could kneel down, Scott’s inhaler in hand as she administered it to him and then lead him over to sit with her on a clammy bench for the rest of recess. She didn’t notice, or maybe she didn’t care, when Stiles reappeared as if by magic and slid wordlessly onto the bench next to Scott, and this time, it was Scott that slid trembling fingers over the other’s wrist and twisted their hands together again. They couldn’t stay like that all day, but they held on until the absolute last second, when they were forced to let go for one reason or another, and even then they stayed close, mutual shadows never drifting more than a few inches out of their shared space. 

From that day on, they accepted (even if they didn’t totally understand) that they were no longer wholly individual. Everyone around them came to accept it, too, that they were a pair, a package deal, and where one of them went, the other was sure to follow. Anyone who dared to make fun of Stiles would have Scott coming at them before they even realized what was happening, and the two would lie afterward where they fell, asthma and spindly limbs and the lack of a vicious bone in either of their bodies making it sort of inevitable that they would always come out of fights on the losing side, and they couldn’t even bring themselves to care that they were lying there in the dirt, bloodied and breathless, simply for the fact that they were there together. No matter what happened, they could always count on having a steady, loyal heart next to them and a hand to hold. In that way, they never truly lost.

No matter what problem they came up against, no matter how insurmountable, nothing ever quite seemed to eclipse the comfort of that connection. They didn’t always need words the way other people seemed to crave them, cling to them; words were nice, useful sometimes, but words could never mend the cracks in their hearts the way the weight of the other’s palm against theirs could. It was that simple touch that brought them back from the brink in hospital rooms quiet except for the steady beat of a heart monitor ( _‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do for her’_ ), on battlefields littered with suitcases ( _‘I’ll see you in court,’ ‘Yeah, and I’ll see you in hell, bitch’_ )— an anchor, before they even knew what that term would come to mean to either of them. It was what kept them grounded, reminded them that they didn’t have to face anything alone because they never really were alone, not after that day. Not after Stiles leaned down over him and took his hand, and it was as if an invisible tether had been strung between them where their pulses pressed solidly together.

They had never faced anything yet that had felt too much for them, that had felt like it couldn’t be solved and folded neatly into the space between them with the rest of their triumphs, until now, here in a dank warehouse, watching Jackson bleed out in Lydia’s arms, and Allison stand dazedly over a stagnant pool of blood blackened by mountain ash and rot, the rest gathered to the side in stunned silence, just watching. It feels like an ending, but not at all like a victory, because every move he made to get to this point he made alone, and he’d never imagined coming out on the other side of anything without Stiles by his side. He can sense Stiles’s presence a few yards away, tucked somewhere past the broad expanse of Derek’s shoulders, that simple fact stretching yards into miles, and Scott has lost his mother’s trust, and Allison’s love, but it’s only in this moment that he realizes he’s never been so close to the precipice of losing everything.

Because Stiles  _is_  everything. He’s rooted so deeply in Scott’s existence that Scott isn’t sure how he could keep breathing without Stiles tangled through his heart, his memories, pulsing in his very blood. Everyone has someone that they don’t want to lose, but Scott has always had Stiles, who he  _can’t_  lose, because without Stiles, there won’t be enough left of him to stand alone, and he’ll simply cease to exist.

It’s only now that the immediate danger is receding (the scales fading from Jackson’s skin, the thin trail of black Gerard left behind) that Scott realizes how neatly their world has come crashing down around them while he wasn’t looking. How he put space between them, loosened the tether inch by painful inch, for Stiles’s own good, and how after all of that, all the walls that were thrown up between them out of necessity, he still hadn’t been able to protect Stiles. It hadn’t been remotely worth it. The cascade of fiery curls down Lydia’s back is blurring, his eyes filling with tears as he realizes that the one person he never even considered losing might already be lost—

—and then he feels fingertips ghosting over his wrist, tentative as if he isn’t sure he’s allowed to anymore, but in the space of his next breath Stiles regains his confidence and their fingers are intertwining, and Scott nearly gives himself whiplash turning to meet his eyes. He’s so close, just like the first time, close enough that his freckles are half out of focus and Scott can feel warm breath ghosting over his lips like he’s trying to share the same air and his world narrows to wide brown eyes and a slightly sweaty palm against his.

“Hi,” Stiles breathes, and Scott draws it in, says his name with the same breath; his voice comes out sounding as broken as the smile twisting at the corners of Stiles’s mouth, and then his own. Broken, but then they’re pressing together until there’s no discernable space between protrusions of hips and shoulders; Stiles is dipping his head to rest on Scott’s shoulder like it belongs there, and Scott is pressing a kiss against close-cropped hair because it does. They don’t need words, they’ve never needed more than this— the simple reminder in the points where they connect, in the steady echo of their heartbeats aligning, that they’re two, but they’re also one, and it already feels as though they’re mending. 


End file.
